National Library of Australia Digitizing Old Newspaper Articles

I must admit that there is a lot of truth to what you, MK, have written here in your article, and that hurts to agree, being an Independent author (I feel my peers steely stare as they read this). But if authors who are independent, if they have any sense of integrity, have to (well, they don’t have to) but they should be nodding their head in agreement. I’ve read the stories on John Locke and I’m not happy about it, though from reading the ink on Todd Rutherford that you provided, John Locke wouldn’t give a shit what I thought. What I don’t like is being lumped in with the lot that displays or has no integrity, or even honesty while we’re at it in trying to reach the lofty perch that is supposed to be based on merit and not falsehood. As an author, I want any degree of success I achieve to be based on the merit of my work, not some cooked up piece of tripe that isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. If people want to be writers, authors, then they should act like one and integrity and honesty, along with professionalism is the first step toward achieving it, no matter what we choose as our vocation.

In reply to your article yesterday that garnered all the comments, over 200 and counting I believe, there is a solution to the publishing malaise that has hit all authors. I firmly believe that sites such as Amazon are a big part of the problem, if not THE PROBLEM but not just Amazon. What all the online retailers like Amazon are currently doing is accepting all submissions from authors with no guidelines in place and we all know this. Heck, an author can presently upload their own work themselves without proper formatting.

All online retailers that allow anyone to upload their book for digital distribution should be held to a standard and it’s not that hard or difficult to implement if all parties agree, which are mainly the online retailers, because let’s face it, just as the traditional publishing houses are the gatekeepers for any author who wants to publish their work through them, the online retailers such as Amazon are the gatekeepers to online publishing.

And this is the solution, or at least, the starting point.

As it stands right now, all authors who want to publish their work, have to do so through online retailers such as Amazon if they are not tied to a traditional publishing company. Amazon is being used here as the starting point because they are the biggest online retailer of books but the solution has to be adopted and applied to and by all for this to work. (Its called an Industry Standard.)

1.) In order to publish their manuscript, all authors will have to submit their work to an editor, an editor that has signed on with, whether it be Amazon or B&N or Kobo, to name some of them. In fact, all of the online retailers can and should use the same list for uniformity.

2.) The editors would of had to submit their resumes to Amazon and the like by following a set of guidelines set up by an unbiased panel of ??? to oversee the editors inclusion on the list of acceptable editors (would have to be in the hundreds or thousands but it would be an excellent marketplace for professional editors to garner work without having to advertise).

3.) The board should not include the traditional publishing houses. They are the gatekeepers of their stable. Instead, there are enough qualified editors out there who can set up the guidelines for this independent stable.

4.) Potential authors would then select an editor of their choosing. Once the editorial work has been completed, they can then submit their work for uploading.

5.) The online retailers would know if their work was properly edited by a professional editor because it would be logged on their site.

6.) The online retailers would also do all the formatting (digital) because all digital books would then be properly formatted under the rules.

Problems with editing and formatting are now solved.

As to the quality of the work, that would be up to the purchaser who buys a particular book and the subsequent review they leave. Again, let’s face it, there are good and bad books marketed by the traditional publishing houses.

Maybe online retailers like Amazon don’t want to be or get involved but they are involved, up to chins and everybody here knows that too. Their inclusion of everybody who wants to publish a book makes them the biggest problem to standards and guidelines to publishing online.

So there you have it. You and everyone else, including the traditional publishing houses , independent authors who want guidelines in place. I would support it with no problem because those who want to be authors and who are serious about the quality of their work will be more than willing to participate because they would be paying for these services anyway. They would or should be more than willing because this is the only way they will get their work online with the retailers, the same way that those authors who choose the traditional publishing houses can only get their work published, by adhering to their guidelines.

For those who are only interested in uploading inferior work or do so only for profit, they will eliminate themselves by not wanting to pay for the services of editing and formatting.

7.) The Vanity presses would only exist to service those authors who don’t want to follow the guidelines in place but they would soon vanish over a short period of time. Why and how? Because online retailers are the gatekeepers. Without following the guidelines in place, there is no place for these misfit authors to go. They lost and they will be no more. The Vanity presses? They will disappear because there won’t be any customers.

What if the online retailers won’t go for it?

You have to approach them with an intelligent panel that knows the issues and this is where one should consider bringing in the traditional publishing houses because it is in their best interest as well as the online retailers because it means their authors will sell more books too. It also fosters a healthy market system of fair competition.

Digest it and tell me what you think? Is it at least a starting point?

Well obviously not all authors pay for reviews, ratings and pay people to download their book. The guy who wrote the 4 hour workout and whatnot gave 1,000 of his books away in exchange for 5 star reviews on Amazon, is this gaming the system? How about trading reviews among friends? What about paying Kirkus reviews to read your book and write a glowing review that you can interject into your book cover? Or, what if people buy reviews in vast quantities? Is there a specific line that can’t be crossed? Indie Authors, there is no ethics, there is no underlying dogma on what is proper and what is not. John Locke gamed the system and sold a million eBooks, no slap on the wrist, he continues to sell, so why not everyone else?

The main problem i see with artificial inflation is if more people are doing it, it will make quality books harder to find. You will have sub-par books make it high in the ratings, because the authors had deep pockets.

If you look at it maybe from this way. I am Michael Kozlowski, and i am starting a small eBook only imprint. I want to sign a few authors and have them sell really well, that will encourage more authors to sign up with me and let me get royalties. So, i game the system and pay $10,000 for each book, buy reviews and ratings on 1st day of release. So it gets pushed up the rankings. This should get more people to buy the book, because a new book with lots of downloads and sales, has to be good right? This is good for me, because it gives me bargaining power over future authors I sign. The authors see that 1,000 copies of their books sold in the first few days and tell all of their other author friends. People see me as a small imprint with a good track record of sales from day one, they are impressed. I get more business, I game the system, no one notices, I am small scale. Multiply this by 10,000 other indie authors and 100 small presses and you have a major problem.

What you’re describing sounds perfect…on paper. What that will eventually lead to is a whole new gatekeeper system. GoodEReader spent a year interviewing indie authors about their experiences, and while some of the books were truly awful, that is just my opinion. The editor-in-chief of this website and I had a playfully heated exchange this week about the book Wool. I loved it, he hated it. If he and I were both editors vetting this content like you describe, it would be a coin toss as to which of us received the book for submission and the book’s publication may or may not happen based solely on the literary tastes of the editor.

Brian, you are a fine man and bang on!

I’m not sure that will fully work. Proper formatting — that’s a uniform standard that can be fairly applied, and yes, that would be quite worthwhile. Good idea.

But what standard would you use for editing? Reject if two or more typos or grammatical errors show up? Twenty?

And, are you speaking of “mechanical-level” editing like that, or are you also including things like the John Galt Speech from “Atlas Shrugged,” which the editor unsuccessfully begged Ayn Rand to pare down? Now we delve into the subjective realm, no?

Still, I encourage creatively innovative remedies for a market with great potential — for a golden pond or just a frustrating cesspool, depending on what the industry does to fix this problem.

I signed up with Amazon’s “Exclusive” program, and was supposed to get some exposure for my books. Didn’t see it. Offered my books (3 of them) for free for a weekend, hoping to get some reviews, favorable or not, I didn’t care. Didn’t get any. People grabbed them, didn’t bother leaving any sort of review at all. I had lots of favorable comments on them, but most folks didn’t bother leaving reviews.
That having been said, I’m in no way going to buy ANY type of review. Can’t do that. Wouldn’t feel right.